Valparaíso and Tourist

Before the broken edges of an old city’s coast;
before the waves breaking on the wharves;
a city lost in the fog tumbling in from the ocean,
in snakes of fog sliding down from the mountains,
I’m tumbling through skins to my origins.

I am tumbling and my skin’s shade is changing;
I am the television virus, my skin is brightening;
I am from the land of ether, of foamed milk;
I am the loved one, only ever the one, the one loved for being one;
I am the one writing with all my weight.

A trail of footsteps across the stars;
I’ve scratched away footsteps one by one,
each step burnt a field, a mask, a dormant carbon mass;
I’m nothing but masks with eyes of furious sulphur;
I am a moon in search of a planet in search of a moon.

If I was in love it was with a woman becoming a man;
if I was loved it was by a world becoming a woman.
I was never loved by the grumpy old goanna;
I was never loved by the wings of the circling goshawk;
if it was love it was a chain of grumpy old ions going senile in the galactic mirage.

I have been loved, but only on occasion,
and I am loved, but only by staggered occasions;
staggering past hollowed buildings: empty teeth,
screwing them hollow for my filthy heap,
the fact is none would love me if they could see inside.

As a living thing I am growing outwards, spreading;
as a living I am fattening, spreading outwards, phoning;
as a dead heart growing;
as a dead heart sprawling over tarmac
while the black skins of the bitumen places sizzle underneath.

For my living I am ripping off their rhythms;
I am ripping off skins, buying the hearts of places;
I’m spreading cancer thick like a famous yeast;
this strange old city tumbling down in granules;
cancer is dancing in the memories of my metal cells.

So come to me on a lonely night when I least expect it;
come to me on the one night I most deserve it;
come to me, roll to me over the lonely hakea and the singing she-oak;
look for me, come to me, hold me and learn me,
we’ll meet by the edge of this crumbling city’s dreams.

For left alone I ferment into lonely flora;
I become the stench of the alcoholic plagues;
I reach out and devour the seeds of places;
I gain weight and lose it immediately in their throats,
my stinking ferment causing them atrocious choking spasms.

You’re coming to me in the night furthest from my origins,
we’re walking down the most sacred, cobblestoned streets;
I’ve taken your hand and your hurtling music
and I’m rolling slowly over your bleeding tongue,
for I am the gum plague, the gases crushed in the star burning furthest from reach.

Stuart Cooke's latest poetry collection is Opera (2016). His other books include George Dyuŋgayan's Bulu Line: a West Kimberley song cycle (2014), Speaking the Earth's Languages (2013) and Edge Music (2011). He lectures in creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University.